5 things to highlight during appraisals

It’s time for employees to showcase their accomplishments and get that much-needed raise or promotion. We tell you the five definitive things you should mention in your appraisal form and meeting, vetted by industry insiders.

Appraisal time is here and employees are busy crunching reams of data to showcase their professional achievements of the past year. Employees often don’t shy away from checking references away on the internet to make their appraisal documents sound important. Heavy sounding words, overused phrases and sometimes even dramatic presentations are often showcased to the appraisers.

While you should be showcasing your strengths, but do so in a structured manner, say experts from the HR field who are privy to such conversations and confrontations. They suggest that instead of pouring your heart out, it is better for a candidate to think through the entire process and break down all the achievements. Further, a formal but polite tone and a receptive attitude reflects positive for a person showcasing his/her appraisal.

Here are the five things that one should definitely showcase in the appraisal meeting:

1. Business impact created

“A company only wants to hear just one thing – what impact have you created on the overall business,” says a representative from business solutions firm Cranberry Solutions. Showcase that first. Your long list of achievements don’t mean anything if they have not been able to bring in the moolah. First and foremost, talk about that function for example – creating 10 designs that were approved by the client and got a repeat order for the firm. That makes more sense than saying things like ‘highly business oriented designer’.

2. Quantitative achievements

“A manager wants to know if you completed the targets assigned to you,” says a recruiter from Czar Solutions. “Numbers is what defines 80 per cent of roles. Hence stating the numbers that you achieved in plain simple language with all facts and figures ready is ‘the’ thing to showcase in your appraisal form,” he says.

3. Qualitative additions

Numbers don’t mean a thing if they don’t showcase quality. Quality highlight of the work is equally important. “Don’t say that you did a great thing. Add the recommendations or accolades that you got for the job done to the quality slide. That will explain all,” says Czar Solutions.

Another thing is that one must try and mention the good words mentioned by the top bosses in this case.

4. Work done out of the league

This is not the age when one should only focus on his/her own work. A marketing person bringing in a sales client is always welcome. One must write about things done outside work frame, like helping in CSR activities, pitching in for company library, participating in hackathons etc. These show the versatility of a person, after all who wants a one-way focused employee?

5. Team player

And when you do all of these, don’t forget to talk about your team playing ability. One should ideally talk about projects or times where he played with the team, like a cog in the wheel. When doing so, talk about “we” achieved this and not “I” achieved this. The idea is to harp of your community building capabilities and not traits when we pushed others behind!

Yojana Sharma, TimesJobs.com

Source: techgig.com